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Friday, 2 December 2011

If you were following my blogs about frantically building a stand and printing for the Craft Fair last month, you may have noticed a bit of silence since then. Been busy as usual...

The stand looked great and the prints sold well. So well that my new set of cards is practically sold out over the weekend, the remaining sets are for sale at North Rock Gallery in Lerwick. Pictured below is the stand (built with loads of help from my dad), pictures of the Top Toys of the 80's cards and some pictures of some new lino cuts I have been working on.

My prints are always available to buy online at my Etsy store. There is still time to order for Christmas and if you leave me a nice note I will throw in a free card or postcard.

My stand at Craft Fair, Clickimin Centre November 2011

Top Toys of the 80's - set of 4 limited edition hand screenprinted cards

Top Toys of the 80's - set of 4 limited edition hand screenprinted cards

Colour one complete - 200 cards in total

Printing the 4 designs at the same time right onto cut and creased card to save time

The final set of prints 50 of each design

New Prints: To continue on the 80s theme this week I have also been working on some more 80s inspired print, but this time lino print. VHS tape and Scalextric. Good memories.

You may say this is a very basic introduction, and you would be right, but it gives an insight into how more advanced techniques, such as letter press and lino print work. Some of the class got the chance to experiment with lino cutting and stamping, which worked great. Over the next three weeks the class will have the opportunity to apply these print techniques to their projects if they so wish. Now the pictures:

Papa de diamante

Tuesday, 18 October 2011

Wow, it's been a hectic week. My stand is almost complete thanks to my dad and also Sandy for helping me paint. A few finishing touches when I get back and it's ready to go.

So due to weather conditions I've had to travel to mainland Scotland from Shetland a day earlier, I'm writing this on the ferry.

Like I said, This week has been so busy, we've (just about) moved flat (we officially move after holiday), almost finished my craft fair exhibition stand, screen printed lots of small postcard sized art cards and gift cards, designed the craft fair posters with help from the muckle Gravit and of course the famous Andrew Watt, many thanks to him for agreeing to being wrapped up in a huge ball of old smelly knitting.

So now I can hopefully enjoy some time off before diving right back into the craft fair when I get back.

This years Christmas Craft Fair is at Clickimin Centre, Lerwick from 11-13 November.

Here is a sneak peek at what I've been doing, will have more about the prints post holiday! I'm off to the bar...

Wednesday, 12 October 2011

Wow time flies! it was about a month ago now since I posted about my plans to build a stall for this year's Craft Fair (see post 14 Sept 2011)

Things have been progressing well, although, it's now a week until my holiday, and alot of work to do! The original Google SketchUp model from my last post helped me work out what I wanted the stand to look like, keeping in mind possible future use. It also let me measure around about how much plywood and timber I would need.
My Dad has played a big part in helping the build, including transport from the timber yard, space to build and ideas how it will all work, which has been brilliant.
The panels have now all been prepared and we have had a test set up to make sure everything fits together and to see how it will look.

Next stage is to paint the stand white, and get the shelves ready and in place. The shelves will be moveable so I can play around with where prints sit in the stand. Last night we tested out one shelf and got everything else ready to attach the shelves after I paint the box.

The other shelf attachments are made from the same square blocks but screwed into the side frame. The shelf then sits on top of the attachments. Each shelf will also have a small groove for prints to sit into. Prints will all be mounted and packaged ready to sell. In two minds if I will paint the shelves as the wood is really nice, will just see what it looks like when we get them all attached!
We tested a shelf on the back right panel, the large bolt on the left holds the two back panels together but also acts as attachment for a shelf.
So a bit to do on the stand, keeping in mind I am also busy preparing artwork for other prints for the Craft Fair. Here I am working on some new Christmas cards. Planning a set of 4 limited edition cards which will be released at the Craft Fair in November and be on special offer. A few more things in the pipeline - so hope to reveal some more before my holiday!

Wednesday, 14 September 2011

This year I am going to have a stall at the Shetland Arts & Crafts - Clickimin Craft Fair 11th - 13th November. I'm away on holiday in the few weeks leading up to the craft fair *(The Fest, Florida!)* so I need to be ready to exhibit when we return in November!

I'm busy thinking about my stand (see draft model above) and new prints. Will post more of the process of both over the next few weeks, very exciting and busy!

In this course you will explore handmade elements to produce eye catching solutions to design problems. Learn about research, layout, typography and printing.

Learners will work to set project briefs during the course – prioritizing handmade elements but utilizing computer skills where appropriate.
Increased confidence and skills in producing handmade elements in Graphic Design. Increased knowledge about Graphic Design in contemporary and historical context. Use a range of research and thinking methods to develop Graphic Design concepts. Evaluate graphic design elements in context of user requirements

Tuesday, 26 July 2011

Daniel gear + Jono Sandilands - Music video for Poison Popcorn "In The Drink"After years of speaking about a collaboration, good friend Daniel Gear and myself finally found the time (albeit very tight time) to work together on a project. We were both approached to submit artwork to Shetland's Vunk Fest art show at Shetland Musuem in July 2011. It was perfect time to work together and the chance to work with video with an afternoon screening of films already being planned. We put in our proposal and were booked with a rough slot for our as-of-yet-non-existent film.

Although we knew it was in July, it wasn't until mid June we realised how quickly time was getting on and we'd better get a move on with the film. We had some brainstorming sessions to come up with the idea for the film. We agreed it would be a music video most likely for Poison Popcorn. We came up with the concept of almost a reverse green screen using green coloured card as the 'portal' allowing a layer below to be revealed. Proof of concept below:

We needed people, Facebook has alot of them so I put out a call to anyone interested in helping us make the film. This happened to be on the Wednesday before the festival, so needless to say I was slightly anxious we would be done in time.

Thankfully on the night we had a good turn out. Must give out a thanks to everyone involved, it was really great fun making it, and we got some funny looks waving around green bits of card in the middle of the pub. Also must be said at this point, we weren't sure how the final video would look, and knew we would have a busy few days editing the footage together.

Daniel and me called it a night on Wednesday, getting home quite late after some additional footage was filmed (see very end credits of film). On Thursday evening after of day jobs we started the editing process. The first attempt at making the concept work with the footage had us rolling around the floor, amost crying with laughter. Editing at the same time, we managed our workflow to be working on different parts of the video to minimize overall time editing.

We finished the main part of the video at 4am Friday morning, with our day jobs to go to again bright and early. Friday night was spent cleaning up, exporting and producing the credit sequence in time to burn to DVD for Sunday's showing at Shetland Museum & Archives.

Sunday, 26 June 2011

On Sunday 12th of June, along with some friends I volunteered to help out at The Shetland Carers' Cruise. The cruise is a great opportunity for carers and the people they care for to enjoy a relaxing scenic cruise on a ferry around the island of Yell. It was great to hear about some of these remarkable people, most of whom devote their lives to caring for other people. Great way to spend a Sunday.

Sunday, 29 May 2011

At the start of this year, to get ourselves back into the way of working and using our sketchbooks, alongside Andrew Morrison of New Dead Language / Co:Lab we set out to get back to basics with a week long "Doodle Week". (See post here). Doodle week looks set to become an ongoing exercise.The rules were simple, each member must produce one sketch per day, with the main objective to get back into the way of working after the holidays but also to have a, lets say, "bank" of possible ideas to take forward and produce into prints.

The original shown above. A few people have asked, "what does it mean?". I'm not ashamed to say it has no meaning, it was totally a case of visualizing an image in my head and putting pencil to paper to make it a reality. I did want to create a sense of spookiness/eeriness/weirdness, I hope it comes across.

It could be said the girl takes influence from the twins in 1980 psychological horror film, The Shining. The girls in the film may have been based on a photo by American photographer Diane Arbus - 1967 photo of identical twins shown below:

It may be interesting to make a matching print of the girls twin, but that will be something for another day... For now the final print below:

You can see I kept pretty true to the original sketch, I already had a good idea for how I wanted it to look when I did it, so it was quite a seemless process from sketch to print, just spanned out over a much longer time than I normally work ie not to set deadline, exhibition, client etc.

Sketch produced in January and artwork inked over the next few months when I had a spare moment, to final print in mid May.

Sunday, 8 May 2011

If you read my last blog post (Printing with a view - 27 April 2011) you would have seen my girlfriend and me were house sitting out in the country for a week. At the end I mentioned I was also working on another print during that week and would be posting soon...The Goodwill Merchant

After a bit of internet research about the area we were staying in for the week, I found out about a ship that wrecked in 1976 on the coast nearby - Goodwill Merchant. The article linked mentioned of some the lost cargo of the ship being new cars. All the work that went into manufacturing and shipping the cars, just lost like that. Don't mess with the sea.

The print is also a nod towards how some cars on the islands were disposed of until not too long ago (see youtube video I came across a few years back: !!!)

I began thinking about the amount of car parts at the bottom of the ocean around Shetland.

Process and (lack of) timeSo time really went way too fast during the last three days house sitting, and I had to rush away to Aberdeen at the end of the week, leaving no time to update this here blog.Wed 27 - Research, Initial drawing and layout:Thurs 28 - Finish Layer 1 inking + Beetle - photographed below, crawled up the leg of my jeans whilst I was inking, aaah!+ After some heavy inking over the 2 days I finally finish on Thursday night.

Thursday night ends with a late night journey to town to print film positives for exposure to screen for Friday morning.

It was quite strange, after printing the film I drove past this wrecked car, which looked like it had possibly been fished out of the harbour. (poor quality phone pic)

The 2 positive films held together in the light, can kind start to get a taste of how the print will work:Fri 29 - The main reason we were house sitting was to look after 4 excellent cats. One of which is a natural hunter - he brought us 2 rabbits and on the last morning, this mouse, who had seen better days but survived!Exposure of screen + printing. Here is a pic of the garage converted to temporary print workshop. Note the bamboo drying racks: its the way forward!

Then there was a mad dash to catch my flight. No time to even blink on the last day! But really pleased with how much I managed to get done over the week.